


i didn't have to call it loneliness

by ze_z_zi



Series: Hanahaki AU [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Borderline Personality Disorder, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jealousy, Vomiting, the age difference is the main conflict here, the vomiting is not detailed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23698930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ze_z_zi/pseuds/ze_z_zi
Summary: "After she went to the specialist’s office she did what everyone seems to do: research. She learned everything she could aboutlaburnum anagyroides. They’re found in Galar, but not native to the region. They flower from trees. They’re commonly known as Golden Chain flowers.All parts are poisonous."-You don't have to read my previous story Fifteen to enjoy this, but it'll make the experience better.Title is from "Hunger" by Florence + the Machine
Relationships: Dande | Leon/Original Character(s), Dande | Leon/Original Female Character(s), Kibana | Raihan/Original Character(s), Kibana | Raihan/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Hanahaki AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706731
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	i didn't have to call it loneliness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ActualMercy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActualMercy/gifts).



> Thank you Mercy for all your help and patience with me:33  
>  **All triggering topics are not described in detail, and are mild in nature. I did my best to be realistic to my own experiences with BPD and trauma post sexual assault. Reactions to trauma is not one size fits all. ******

The first ones come after a match against Raihan. 

Ze is used to the warmth in her chest during the battles, how sometimes it escalates to burning in the heat of the moment between them. Raihan always manages to make their battles feel like an intimate act, despite the thousands of eyes in the stands and the millions of viewers. 

Ze only worries once that warmth persists through her shower and post-match interviews.

It isn’t a flower. 

It’s just two yellow petals in the palm of her hand. It’s like that for a little while, mere petals she collects and compares to every picture of yellow flowers she finds on the internet. 

The petals are distinctive. They’re bright yellow and curl out as if to display the broken streaks of red that run up the center of each one. Her search yields no results and she figures she’ll just have to wait for a whole bloom to come out.

More than anything, Ze is confused about her sudden illness. She knows what Hanahaki Disease is, everyone does. She’s seen the disease in the world’s most depressing vignettes. From blood spattered fully bloomed flowers crushed into the pavement underfoot busy strangers in Motostoke to tiny petals dotting the hallways of her private Wyndon academy. Ze remembers a girl who stepped up to present a project to their class and the rush of petals that fell from her mouth when she opened it to speak.

She knows who the flowers are for, or rather who the flowers are. In most strains of Hanahaki, the flowers grown are representative of who the inflicted is in love with. The only thing she doesn’t know is why now?

The timing makes no sense. If she had come down with Hanahaki two years ago, when Raihan told her they have to wait to be together. To see if they care once Ze is no longer idolizing him, when they’re equals rather than a fan and the man she’s obsessed over for three years. When she’s older, period. If Hanahaki happened then, it would make sense. His flowers should have come with the crushing weight of his abando—No. 

Ze forces herself out of that line of thought. Tells herself Raihan did not abandon her, even if it felt like that. 

_ He made the right decision. I was fifteen, he was eighteen. He did it  _ **_because_ ** _ he loved me _ . She reminds herself.

It doesn’t erase the fact that the flowers should have grown when she was hurting then, not now. Not at seventeen, not at all. 

He still loves her.

* * *

Ze’s coughing petals for the next few days. 

Coughing them into her hand, apologizing and tucking them away in a pocket or tossing them in the bin when she gets up for hand sanitizer. It’s easy enough, until one day the warmth in her chest becomes a constant burn and her coughs begin to hurt.

It’s how the whole day goes. Harsh, dry coughs and her drinking a lot of water to try and soothe her sore throat. A nice girl in her Maths class offered her some cough drops, the expensive herbal kind, and she had no reason to refuse. There’s still a cough drop burning a hole in her uniform jacket when she’s on her way home.

She’s with a friend, Eliot, the only one she bothered to make at her stuffy Wyndon academy for elites. At first, she didn't want to accept being lumped in with the children of CEOs, new and old money, but she figured being Champion  _ did _ make her an elite. Even if her classmates sneered at her accent before they all realized who she was under her glasses and plain makeup. Despite her distaste for them, she has to admit she isn’t a civilian anymore and would never be one again.

As Eliot talks about the changing seasons and the dropping temperature, she catches a shot of her and Raihan’s match on one of the many screens above the streets of Wyndon. She can’t hear what the sports broadcaster is saying through the steady din of the city, but there’s a shot of Raihan and she’s having another coughing fit. 

She clutches at her chest, shirt crumpling in her hand as the fire in her chest roars to life. It feels like she’s boiling just beneath the surface, that her skin will bubble up and peel away, exposing the garden in her lungs. 

It’s an odd sensation, the strain on her esophagus contrasting the silk of the petals tickling her throat. 

Tears obscure her vision, turning the world around her fuzzy as they spill onto the lens of her glasses. She feels a hand on her shoulder and one on her back. She would jump away if she wasn’t in so much pain. She can’t recognize who it is, but there’s a voice calling her name asking her what’s wrong like she can answer them. 

Her hands go to her throat, trying to convey what’s happening to her. She makes sure her next cough is worse, rougher to try and push up the flowers as she reaches into her mouth to pull them out.

Sites say this isn’t how you should do it, but it’s scary. She’s choking and she has to breathe. It’s too early for the disease to be killing her.

There’s no sound aside from the slick noises of her spit and the squelching of her throat as she rips out the long flowering strand. Ze doesn’t know if she just can’t hear in her panic or if the spectators have gone silent in shock of the state she is in.

The flower is wet and part of it is crushed from where she grasped it to pull, but even light-headed from the lack of oxygen she can’t believe how beautiful it is. It’s probably because she’s light-headed that she thinks it’s beautiful.

She’s pulled to a chair to rest by one of the onlookers. She’s dizzy and breathing heavy. She leans forward, head lowered and coughs a bit more and she steadies herself for another full bloom, but it’s just petals now. She watches them float lazily down to her hand. One slips between her fingers and lands in her lap, sharp yellow on her red plaid skirt.

No one recognizes Ze as someone calling themselves a doctor pushes through the small crowd to ask her how long she’s had Hanahaki. When she says four days, her face turns in a way. The doctor turns her attention to the flower in her hand, asking to see it.

Ze hesitates, but the hands the yellow blossoms over. 

“I don’t specialize in Hanahaki, but I’ve seen plenty of cases in my years, dearie,” The doctor tells Ze as she examines the flowers.

The crowd has dispersed, but her friend is still there, standing at the edge of the scene. Eliot looks worried, but he gives her a little smile, wanting to encourage her. She tries to smile back, but it comes out more of a pained grimace. Who can blame her, though? Those flowers tore her throat raw just now.

Ze looked back to the doctor who smiled to try and comfort her. It only makes her feel worse.

“These are  _ laburnum anagyroides _ , the common laburnum,” 

_ There’s nothing common about him _ , Ze thinks. The face she made must have seemed more confused than angry because the doctor goes on. 

“It’s quite the mouthful, I know. Ironically, these flowers are quite uncommon in Hanahaki, the most common flowers being daisies, peonies, and roses of course. All flowers symbolizing types of love, but some people’s flowers are indicative of the state of a relationship as well,”

She hands the blossoms back to Ze and tells her the first full bloom is the worst. She tells Ze about a colleague of hers who specializes in treatments for Hanahaki Disease.

“Personally, I recommend the surgery. You're in the early stages, maybe the love will last?”

It’s the most unprofessional professional opinion Ze has ever recieved and she immediately writes off getting the surgery. Not that she considered it in the first place.

Before she can reach for her bag and get up, she starts coughing once more. The doctor is gone at this point, but she feels Eliot’s hand on her back rubbing little circles and gently patting. It’s another full bloom this time and it slips out of her throat easily. Its petals press against her teeth as the large flower fills her mouth fast. The laburnum falls out and into her waiting hands once she opens her mouth for the flower.

“Hey, that one wasn’t so bad, yeah?”

Ze smiles at the flowers.

“Yeah, it wasn’t,”

She’s still dizzy as she stands and they continue their walk. Eliot has to hold her by the arm, keeping her out of the way of strangers, reminding her of when it looked like her flowers were close to slipping from her hand. She gets her bearings by the time Eliot stops at a little corner store and tells her that she should stock up on tea.

He looks away from Ze when she asks about it, if he researched Hanahaki. Ze knows she used to. She had a fascination with flowers and the lungs they grew in. You don’t find them in too many places, unless you see them out in the wild. 

Really old books mention giving flowers as declarations of love, but it’s a little weird now. Not uncommon, by any means, to most people flowers are still a gift, they just have more weight behind them. To a lot of people, flowers feel like a commitment. 

“It’s...” Ze reaches out to him this time, her hand on his broad shoulder. His starched white shirt is cool under her hand. “This is the brand my sister drank when she had it. She didn’t want the surgery, so she just...lived with it until she finally got over herself and told him,”

“Oh,” She wants to ask about it. Did he love her back? Are they married now? Was she unhappy, but alive? Does she wish it killed her? They’re all on the tip of her tongue, but it’s not appropriate. She’s never met Eliot’s sister, it would be weird to ask such personal questions about her. So she asks about herself.

“What do you think I should do?”

They make their way to the checkout counter as he thinks. Ze it’s sure about what she wants to do about this herself. 

There’s three ways to deal with Hanahaki. The first is obvious, you confess your feelings. Best case scenario, your feelings are returned and you and the object of your desire can move on from there together. Worst case, their feelings are not returned and you get the surgery and it’s not a big deal from that point on. 

Root removal surgery removes your feelings for your love. You don’t even hate them at the end of it, you just feel nothing towards them. It should be easy. A lot of people hope that if they get the operation early enough, before the flowers completely take root, that their feelings will be spared. According to people on Hanahaki support forums, they never are.

Some people just let the disease take them, bitter to the very end and forcing others to acknowledge how their love is killing them. 

Ze knows some people fall in love with the disease. They love the flowers and the constant warmth and searing pain in their chests as much as they love the object of their desires. She doesn’t understand falling in love with that pain, but she knows she’s in no position to judge. She figures that the way she still hopes for Raihan is similar enough.

The heat picks up and she tenses and breathes through the tickle in her throat, but the loose petals push up anyway. Her mouth is full when Eliot answers her.

“You should confess, at least if you do there won’t be any “what ifs”, no matter their answer,”

She nods, but that’s the problem. She and Raihan have already confessed. 

Why is it happening now?

* * *

The disease persists and so does Ze. 

The first bloom was the worst of it. Now when she coughs up petals, even whole strands, her chest never burns as hot as it did that day after school. The pain is never so great that she doubles over.

Like Raihan, the Hanahaki is easy to hide. She coughs them up easily these days, she and Eliot even joke about it. The heat of her chest has faded to the back of her mind, like the pressure of her glasses on the bridge of her nose and the weight of her school bag slung across her shoulders. 

It’s a part of her now.

If she wasn’t Champion she wouldn’t hide it, but she doesn’t want a video surfacing of her spitting up flowers. Doesn’t need her image getting ruined or worse, Leon being the observant fuck he is and trying to piece together who she’s yearning for. Doesn’t want her love to be some cheap 4 o’clock news on the trashier channels. She’s been cheap for long enough.

So at school, she slips into bathrooms and tucks her face into her locker to cough as quietly as possible and lets laburnums fall into her hands. The only person that knows is Eliot.

After she went to the specialist’s office she did what everyone seems to do: research. She learned everything she could about  _ laburnum anagyroides _ . They’re found in Galar, but not native to the region. They flower from trees. They’re commonly known as Golden Chain flowers. 

All parts are poisonous. 

In flower language they are symbols of forsaken, pensive beauty and pensive thought. When Ze read their meaning, she wondered just what it meant for them, knowing Raihan is to blame for this. 

Pensive thought. That’s all she and Raihan have been for two years, pensive. Both of them, held back by the legality of their relationship, which she can’t blame him for. Hell, as Champion she should be doing her best to avoid breaking the law. Or at least not be so blasé about the law the moment it affects her life. 

Ze sighs and leans away from her desk, her office chair squeaking. Her Toxtricity looks up from her space on Ze’s bed, questioning her trainer with a little noise.

“It’s nothing Ube, just,” Ze looks back down at her school work, her textbook opened to a page of Math that everyone else in class understands. Everyone but her, like always. “Maybe I should inform the school about it. Try to get myself a lighter workload this term at least,”

It’s not so bad, the disease itself, but she can feel it taking its toll. She’s losing focus more often in class, in meetings, when she’s trying to do her best. At the end of the day, ignoring it does nothing, but it’s what she prefers. Her chest tightens suddenly and she’s rushing forward, coughing up two more golden chains. She’s careful with them, cradling them as she places them on her desk positioning them along the back edge of her desk. They’re the newest in that spot.

She keeps coughing as she thinks of him. Nothing is coming up, but a lot is coming to mind. Ze can’t help herself, sometimes. 

_ That’s how you got into this mess in the first place _ , She thinks. 

It doesn’t matter though. How she likes the flowers, she likes him. Likes thinking of his eyes, blue and sharp where his flowers are yellow and soft, but both so warm. Both make her chest seize and her breath stop. She spits up more flowers while she thinks of his hands, how gentle they are like the petals on her tongue and the roof of her mouth.

She has to pass the time somehow and what better way than thinking about him? She turns eighteen in only nine more months. In nine months, she can pass the time with him and just the thought soothes the burn in her chest. As the burn goes down more flowers push up, rushing out of her mouth and onto the floor of her bedroom. She can hear Ube’s concerned noises behind her, but she doesn’t come any closer to her trainer. They’re used to it.

There’s no point in hiding in her home, so she doesn’t. This is her everyday now. It’s feeding her team, brushing her teeth, getting up and getting dressed. 

It’s love.

* * *

Her love keeps her warm as fall settles in Wyndon.

More than just her uniform has changed in the last month or so. She and Eliot aren’t the only ones that know about her illness now. She decided even though the thought made her feel so weak, she bit the bullet and brought a note from her doctor about her condition. Hanahaki is a serious disease and the school handled it as such, notifying her teachers and allowing Ze to do assignments at her own pace so long as she finishes them with her typical high marks. 

It’s kept quiet, of course. The school is used to overbearing parents buying their children’s success, used to avoiding legal teams, so they know how to keep their Champion’s illness under wraps. Her teachers allow her breaks in class for her flowers, not that she needs them too often. She can avoid thinking of Raihan during school hours unless her classmates mention him near her. She’s lucky people stopped bugging her for autographs from her fellow League members once they realized she was never going to. She can’t imagine how frequent her “flower breaks”, as Eliot has taken to calling them, would be if that was still the case. 

She can feel herself getting worse, but it’s hard to find the time to worry about it. It’s off season, but as December creeps closer and closer so do the Holidays and Holidays mean advertising season. And everyone is vying for the Champion to be in their advertisement and honestly...she has no reason to turn down most.

With her assignments’ deadlines waived for the time being, she has more time to devote to her duties as Champion and the past two years has taught her that upholding her image isn’t her most important duty, but it’s a major one and is a constant. It’s not the end of the world every day, so she has to maintain what she  _ has _ cultivated. 

No matter how much she wishes she did, she doesn’t only exist on the pitch.

‘ _ You can only be reported on for what happens on the pitch for so long _ ,’ She thinks back to what Raihan told her two years ago and she hates how right he is. Her battling is only one piece of her identity as the Champion, everything else lies in her clothes, in her hair, in her smile. In her crooked teeth and her foreign accent. Every little piece that makes her, on the surface at least.

Her crooked teeth sell at least, if the amount of photoshoots she has planned is any indication. Even if it’s not something she enjoys, she does love the comments and replies people leave on social media when her pictures are uploaded. 

Being Champion puts her in a position for other people to see themselves in her. And it’s rewarding seeing that she does inspire people.

She’s pulled out of her thoughts as her chest blooms and tickles and she’s coughing up a little mountain of petals. Some escape her in the brisk wind of the afternoon, riding the wind with brown and red leaves. The remainder are crushed in her palm and tossed into a metal bin she passes on the street. She notices someone is watching her and just before she fears she’s been found out, someone knows it’s her, they give her a pitying look and turn away from her.

_ Well _ , She thinks.  _ At least the flowers distract from who I am _ .

The flowers are more frequent now. 

From what’s read, soon enough she won’t have to consciously think about Raihan for her to have a fit. She doesn’t know what to do about that, but with her time so scant this season, she’ll just have to cross that bridge when she gets there. Telling Leon seems like the proper course of action, but just thinking about his gold eyes softening at the news pisses her off. She can live without his fucking pity.

She stops for a moment before picking her pace back up. When...when did she start thinking about him like that again? Her thoughts pick up like the wind, trying to recall the last bad thought she had about the chairman. She’s not the best at math, nor the best with remembering anything really, but she tries to calculate the months that have passed. She cocks her head as she turns a familiar corner, it was before the wedding, yeah? She nods to herself. It was before the wedding. Her chest seizes once more but nothing comes up. 

She isn’t allowed much longer to think because she’s suddenly walking past the studio before she rushes back to the frosted glass doors. Some of the young interns are laughing behind the front desk and Ze ducks her head in embarrassment, sure they’re having a laugh at her expense. 

She doesn’t have to go up to the front desk as a sharp dressed woman comes and collects her with a warm smile, but there’s something frenzied in her eyes. 

Ze quickly pulls Rotom from her bag and checks the time. She’s early, so it’s just the usual rush, working project to project without proper pay if this woman isn’t a higher up with this studio.

Her makeup artist for the shoot isn’t as frazzled as the woman who greeted and led Ze to her dressing room. Ze’s never worked with her before, but she remembers when she was shadowing her usual artist at this studio. The makeup artist introduces herself as Essie, like the nail varnish, she says. Ze wonders how often she has to say that so people get it right. They shake hands.

“I’m Ze!” 

“I know!”

They laugh together and it feels nice having someone appreciate that joke for once. Ze already feels her nerves settle as she takes her seat in Essie’s chair and lets her get started. 

It’s a long enough process and neither of them talk too much, thankfully. Ze doesn’t have too much to talk about and she’s exactly eager to say the wrong thing and make the next possible three hours awkward for the both of them. Essie though seems the playful type. Being silly and scolding one of the interns when he pops asks Ze if she’d like any tea or coffee to help her wake up. That they have sparkling water if she’s not in the mood for caffeine.

“Mal, get out here and stop trying to sabotage my work!” Essie shouts.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that today,”  
“I wonder what it means then?”

Ze tells Mal that tea would be nice and tries to settle back in the chair, although it’s not as easy before. Her chest is still warm like always, and it’s tightening but she doesn’t need to cough. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and she’s quick to look away. 

The atmosphere is still warm and friendly, but Ze doesn’t find any comfort in it. She wants to sink further into the chair and hide away, but she wants to talk to Essie and laugh with her too. The door swings open and Mal is back with her tea. He nods politely, but doesn’t introduce himself as he asks how many sugars she takes with her tea.

“Four, please,” She gives a small smile and Mal gives her a look she can’t place.

“Aww, cute! Who woulda thought our Champion had a sweet tooth?”

Ze knows he’s being nice, he seems genuine enough, but there’s a shock from his words. That he’s mocking her. She looks past Essie and at herself in the mirror, taking in her chubby face and her fat neck. Of course she has a sweet tooth.

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath through her nose and out her mouth. Essie asks if she’s ok, Ze tells her it’s just nerves. 

“The Champ still gets those?” Ze gives her a small smile and looks down. 

“Well, I’d tell you not to worry, but Raihan sure did piss off the photographer today, didn’t he, Mal?”

Her chest seizes and again when Mal laughs. 

“Yeah, he kept asking for breaks and with everyone on the Holiday rush it was kind of annoying,” Mal motions to hand Ze her tea, but she puts a hand up. He continues. “With the way he was coughing though, can’t say I blame him,”

“Annoying as he is, he did fill out that suit, yeah?” Mal leaves with Essie shooing him out of the dressing room, saying Ze doesn’t need to hear that about her coworker.

Really, it’s tame compared to some of the stuff she’s heard and seen people say about the dragon tamer, but she’s grateful for the intervention. Her chest feels like it’s about to burst. Her mouth is full of flowers and she’s doing her best to not jump from the chair. Essie pulls her brushes back and makes eye contact with Ze. Ze breaks it fast, more willing to stare at the carpet or the wedding ring on Essie’s finger. 

_ Fuck, _ she thinks as more flowers push up from her lungs. She can’t breath, there’s no room for the new flowers. Ze sets to making room for them, carefully maneuvering the golden chains to her teeth. She opens her jaw enough to push them past her teeth, into her cheeks, tries to make it look like she’s just fidgeting.

“Sorry, did Mal make you uncomfortable? He doesn’t have a filter sometimes,” Ze shakes her head and keeps pushing the flowers to the sides of her mouth, pressing the petals against her teeth, grinding, steady slow chewing. A sharp, overpowering bitterness fills her mouth, coats her teeth and tongue. “Ok, if you’re sure, Ze,”

Essie pulls out her phone and checks the time. 

“Ok! I’m making good time with your makeup, so I’m going to head to the restroom, then!” Essie sets her brushes on the table, careful of Ze’s mug of tea as she hurries out of the room. 

Once the door closes Ze surges forward, grabbing the still hot tea and takes a few deep breaths before taking a large gulp.

Her mouth and throat are burning, but the taste washes out and the petals go down.

She already feels a little sick by the time Essie is back, but she knows the anticipation of waiting for the poisoning. 

It’s too early for symptoms to be present. 

* * *

It takes around fifteen minutes for Ze’s mouth to begin to tingle, then burn, and forty minutes for her to vomit. Despite her experience in coughing up flowers, Ze’s never been sick like this before. 

Even as a kid she had a strong stomach, and that followed her throughout her life, but this isn’t eating bad berries or making a questionable curry. A different woman is helping her into her dress for the shoot when her stomach turns and she’s swallowing her spit to try and settle the rising burn from the bile. For once, Ze breaks and tells the woman that she’s going to be sick.

At the end of the shoot, Ze’s surely in the same regards as Raihan with the photographer. She didn’t need as many breaks as Raihan, but she needed three ten minute breaks to throw up in the bathroom. Luckily, her last break is just her dry heaving into the toilet bowl. The worst part was the fashion intern that had to accompany her to make sure she didn’t damage the rented outfit.

Looking back, Ze doesn’t know if she would’ve preferred for the intern to have tried to appear sympathetic to her sickness or if the lack of response was better. She had been kind enough to bring Ze a cup so she could wash her mouth out each time.

The walk home isn’t easy. Despite the November cold, Ze is warm and sweaty under her clothes. Her breathing is shallow and uneven and she has to push her scarf below her mouth so she can try to breath properly. The crisp air cools her burning mouth and dries up her excess saliva too, so it’s not all bad.

Every restaurant she passes makes her stomach churn uncomfortably. She presses her hand to her belly, hoping the pressure against her could help somehow, but it doesn’t do much. She keeps her eyes low to the ground as her stomach makes a particularly loud, gross noise as she waits to cross a street.

It’s not a long walk to get to the Rose of the Rondelands, it would have been faster to use the city’s monorail or to suffer through a Flying Taxi ride, but Ze feared any extra movement would make her throw up again. Not to mention the last thing she wanted was being pressed up to a bunch of strangers on the monorail while she wasn’t feeling well. Arceus forbid she did have to vomit up there. 

She quickens her pace once she sets foot on the bridge and the hotel she’s started calling home comes into view. She’s happy to leave the cold air outside and step into the warm lobby. The door man greets her by name and his Honedge gives her his cute “weeeeeelcoooooome”. She doesn’t smile back , but she greets the two for them with the warmest hello she can manage. She waves to the concierges as she makes a beeline for the elevators.

She steps back as she waits for the doors to open and pulls out her wallet to grab her keycard. She steps in the empty elevator, inserts her keycard and presses the button labelled C1. The Champion Suite, her home for the past year. Her mother didn’t approve, but moving here made her life easier. Closer to Wyndon Stadium, the League HQ and every major studio that is typically booked for her photoshoots. It was nice getting away from her mother as well. 

She loves her Aayna, but living with her was hard. Arguments over the silliest things because Ze did things differently, and then being expected to be over it just because her mom was. She always managed to set Ze off, effortlessly ruining her day and sending her into a moodswing in record time. 

The elevator opens up, pulling Ze out of her thoughts of her mother and she steps out into the quiet entry hall of the Champion Suite. She breathes deep, settling her stomach a bit before shrugging off her coat and hanging it up in the closet in her foyer. She recognizes how quiet and unsettling the suite is as she’s toeing off her shoes and putting on her slippers.

_ Oh, yeah,  _ She thinks.  _ I put everyone back up this morning after their breakfast, _

It’s silly. For a moment she entertained the thought of someone managing to break in to steal her team. Or them leaving her. 

She’s quick to enter the suite and locate her team’s pokeballs in her bedroom, releasing her Charizard, Dande, before the silence and solitude kills her. Like always he’s excited as if he’s a little Yamper rather than the big fire-breathing lizard he is and Ze has to scold him, reminding him of his tail’s flame. Not that she can be strict with him for long as he lowers his neck, eyes wide and staring right through her. She rolls her eyes at him and opens her arms letting him push himself into her arms, excited to get a hug from his mommy. 

She starts to feel a bit better from being with her baby, but the moment doesn’t last for long, interrupted by the phone ringing in the foyer. She rolls her eyes again and hurries to get to the phone, seems like she just can’t get some time by herself, can she?

She’s out of breath and her chest is burning hotter as she picks up the phone. She can worry about it later after some tea and a shower, though.

“Yes?” Sometimes she still thinks to answer with hello, but it’s always the same person each time for obvious reasons.

“Hello, Miss Ze, I’m calling to inform you that the Chairman’s secretary is here for you. Will I be giving her the key to access your room?”

Her heart seems to stutter as her temper rises. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She has no clue why Xiao is here, which means she forgot something, which means Leon’s not mad at her. He’s just disappointed. 

“Yeah, send her up. Thank you,” She doesn’t bother with sounding pleasant this time.

Ze heads to the kitchen, checking her fridge to see if she still had cake left over from her recent splurge at Wyndon’s Battle Café. She smiles as she pulls the cute pink and white bakery box from the fridge and sets it on the granite countertop. She searches her cupboards for Xiao’s preferred tea. It’s a little hard to find chrysanthemum tea for her, but nothing is that big of a deal when it’s for a friend. 

She pulls the box down and goes back up for her peppermint tea, she hadn’t had any all day and her throat still felt raw from being sick earlier. Her stomach had settled plenty since getting home, so maybe she got over the poisoning and it was just her anxiety keeping her ill.

She turns on the cold tap as she reaches for her kettle and tries willing the water to flow faster. Xiao’s going to be knocking soon. She sets it back onto the element and starts it and takes another deep breath. It sets off a cough and she feels her chest burn worse. She reaches up to rub her chest in small, yet firm circles. There’s no flowers though and that’s all that matters for this surprise meeting. 

The only noise is the faint bubbling of the boiling water and Ze’s shallow breathing before sharp knocking cuts through the relative silence of her suite. Ze looks up and tucks her hair behind her ear, nervous as she heads to the door. 

Ze calls out to Xiao, letting her know she’s coming. She sets her hand on the handle of the door and stares for a moment and pulls her face into her champion smile. She opens the door and greets Xiao, careful to sound happy, but not fake. 

She wonders why she has to do this with Xiao. Nevertheless, Xiao doesn’t pick up any forced behavior on her side if the way the taller woman keeps smiling is any indicator. As Xiao is busy greeting Dande, Ze feels a sharp pain in her chest and drops her smile for a bit. 

It comes back soon enough and it’s more genuine this time around. It’s nice seeing Xiao smile so easily now. Ze can remember when her smile was rare as a Dreepy, but now it’s become more of an everyday occurance. Or, well, the days the two of them get to see each other. 

She’s always kept so busy, time split between Ze the student and Ze the Champion and...well, there’s not much beyond that. And Xiao seems to always have her hands full with being Leon’s secretary, even the days she’s working from home must be tiring for her. She exhales sharply and rubs her chest again, heat rising and her pain sharpening like a knife. She can deal with it after this.

“So, Xiao, before we talk about what I forgot this time, would you care for some tea? I raced to put the kettle on when I heard you were wanting to come up,” She walks back into the suite, Xiao following behind her once Dande was satisfied with the number of pets he received. “I’ve even got some cake from the Battle Café if you’d like some. I’d been in the mood for strawberry that day too,”

"Do not worry, you did not forget anything. Leon does not even realize that I am here, right now." Ze hears her friend giggle behind her and Ze wonders if she’s heard that sound before. If she has, it was a long time ago. Leon was probably involved somehow, Ze realizes and her smile falters. “Tea would be lovely. I am glad that even with how busy you may be now with school and the holidays coming up, you are kind enough to make time for my visit. I hope it was not too troublesome,”

Fuck, it’s weird hearing the smile in Xiao’s voice. Her chest tightens again and she thinks to tell Xiao that she’s never too busy to hang out, but Xiao would take her seriously. And she just kind of wants to be alone right now.

She plays her part, though.

“It’s fine, Xiao,” She says as she sets to pulling saucers down from the cupboard for them. She can’t bring herself to say it. She turns back to Xiao, handing her a plate and setting hers down. “Help yourself to the cake while I get the cups,”

She hears the bakery box being opened and one of the drawers being pulled out then the soft clinking of utensils against each other. Ze doesn’t remember the last time Xiao was in her home, was it really the housewarming? Well, she helped Ze move in too, but everyone helped with that. 

_ Nobody else has really been over since then.  _ It’s an odd revelation to have with company over, and she feels the craving for isolation hit her. It feels like living with Aanya again, trapped. 

Ze turns away from the cupboard, setting down their mugs and nodding towards the boxes of tea waiting on the counter for them. She goes to get the kettle and sugar for them. 

“It has been too long, Ze. I am happy to be spending this time with you,” Ze turns back to Xiao and she’s smiling again, so soft and sweet at her. Her chest is burning again, she can feel bile rising once more. She squeezes the handle of the kettle tightly, swallowing as she smiles back. 

“Me too, Xiao,” She says it with the same guilt she’d have if it were a lie. “I...I missed you a lot,”

She sets the sugar down in front of Xiao, and fills their mugs with the boiling water. She’s taken aback when she notices Xiao remembered how she preps her tea, two bags with their strings tied around the handle. The knife presses deeper. 

“So what’d you sneak all the way over here for, Xiao?” She asks as she drops five cubes of sugar into her tea. Her stirring is lazy and unfocused as she waits for the answer.

Xiao pulls an envelope from her bag. It’s red with a gold wax seal and Ze has to suppress an eyeroll in front of her. It’s always red with her and Leon.

_ Red’s the Champion’s color, I guess. Only excuse for that dumb outfit. _

Ze straightens up as she takes the flashy envelope from Xiao. She looks at Xiao as her thumb presses at the edge of the wax seal. Xiao nods and Ze peels up the seal and pulls out the...invitation? 

Ze reads over the invitation quickly and her chest tightens further. She forces herself to smile even as it feels like all the air is being pushed out of her burning lungs. 

She did forget something.

“It’s already been a year?” Ze makes herself laugh and she hopes she doesn’t sound as bitter and angry as she suddenly feels. “I can’t believe it!”

_ None of us can _ , She thinks.  _ No one would’ve bet money on you two lasting the engagement _ ,

Xiao is smiling again and Ze wishes she’d go back to never doing that. It makes her chest burn too hot for comfort, makes her limbs feel heavier. Her smile makes her head fuzzy and heart stop.

“I wanted to give you your invitation in person, Ze. You and Kabu, specifically. I did not want to risk the possibility of them getting lost in the mail,”

Another smile and she feels like her face is going to break. 

“Thank you, I...It means a lot to me, Xiao,”  _ More than you’ll ever know _ , she wants to say, but she knows she won’t be able to pretend with those words. 

Xiao doesn’t stay much longer, Ze makes sure of that. She pretends that she has work to finish up for class to get her out and Xiao is kind enough to not want to interfere with her studies. She has to refrain from slamming the door shut once Xiao is in the elevator and leaving. She goes to clean up in the kitchen. 

She thinks about Xiao as she dumps out her tea, as she puts the cake away and the plates in the dishwasher. Thinks about Leon and how he had the time to see Xiao as much as  _ she _ had wanted to. She knows she shouldn’t be thinking of her friends like this, she’s working so hard to not, but...it feels nice. Not holding back like she has to. Ze lets her bitterness wash over her as she suffers. 

The knife presses deeper and that’s what she imagines as she leans forward over her kitchen sink.

It’s a knife in her chest as she starts coughing. The pain is unbearable as she starts crying, tears slipping out fast and dropping into the sink. There’s a familiar tickle in her throat as a flower pushes up and she can’t stand the feeling. She reaches into her mouth and realizes it is not a golden chain. No, she feels a real stem rather than the usual long line of petals. 

She holds the flower in her hand. Even with its petals weighed down with her saliva and the stamens bent, it’s strikingly beautiful. Bright red, with several blooms on one stem and long curved stamens. She’s never seen a flower like it before. Ze turns the cold tap on low and sets the flower under the gentle stream, washing away her spit. 

Her chest still hurts as she turns the tap off and heads up to her room, leaving Dande in the living room and the invitation in the kitchen. She knows who the flower is. The eye catching red, the beauty of something so different. It’s Xiao that triggered this second bloom. Doesn’t erase the fact that Ze doesn’t know what this flower is and like Xiao it must not be native to Galar. 

Ze could vaguely remember seeing golden chains in the Wild Area before, but this flower is completely new to her. 

In her room, she did her best to describe the flower to see if she could find a name if anything. She could only think to type “red long stemmed long stamens flower” in the search bar and hope. She quickly switched to images, not bothering with any articles about types of red flowers. 

There it was, the second image to come up. The picture linked back to a flower forum, the poster was trying to identify the flower as well. The first comment identified it as  _ Lycoris radiata _ , one of several kinds of spider lily. Now she just needed to know why this flower, what the meaning could be that tied it back to Xiao. 

Ze isn’t sure when she starts crying again, but this time it doesn’t stop as quickly and the pain in her chest comes back worse. Something else comes with it, guilt and shame. Disgust because this is how this works, right? She starts coughing again, wet and rough, her throat burns with soreness. More red spider lilies spill from her lips, falling to the floor in a flood of bright red. 

She’s supposed to be over this, over someone unattainable, but that’s what Raihan is too, right? This is what she does best, wishing for what she can never have. 

Joy and happiness, love and fulfillment, her nails scratch at her desk as she clutches her hands into fists. The flowers don’t stop, like how she never stopped loving Xiao. Ze just did her best to ignore her, to forget every nasty part of herself, but it always comes back. Her anger, her bitterness, the  _ jealousy _ . Her best was not enough this time.

She thinks back to the day Leon and Xiao told her and Raihan about their engagement, and asked Ze to be the Maid of Honor. There were no petals when she threw up then and no petals at their wedding. Only the bouquet Ze held as Xiao promised herself to Leon for the rest of their lives. She was happy then. Happy to just be a friend, happy to be thought of let alone cared about. 

_ Who else was she going to ask though? She has no friends. Does it matter when you were the only option she had?  _ She can’t say “yes”, so she doesn’t. She feels the same as before, like she’s lying. Lying to herself.

The pain dulls eventually. The tears stop and she tries to breathe properly again. At the end of her fit, there’s a small pile of flowers at her feet. She wants to save them, like the golden chains but why? What’s the use in saving something so sad, so pathetic like love for a married woman. 

Ripping them apart isn’t as satisfying as she hoped it would be. It just leaves that space between her lungs emptier and the sharp pain and the intense burn she feels lets her know the flowers have taken up that space already. It doesn’t matter anyway, no matter how many lilies she rips up, stomps and tears more are coughed up and take the space the last ones occupied on her floor. 

Each flood is more painful than the last and she can barely stand before she quits. She has to lie there, in the bed of lilies, ruined and whole, to catch her breath. She lays there and tries not to think of anything at all. But she can’t ignore the silk of the petals against her arms and the back of her neck. When she opens her eyes all she sees in her peripherals is red. The next fit is empty, no flowers, not even a petal. 

There’s only pain. 

She manages to get off the floor and shuffle to her bed. The exhaustion settles under her skin and into her bones once she lays down in her sheets. She looks over to the golden chains on her bedside table. She wants to reach out to them, but she’s too tired. 

* * *

Ze only gets worse, in the few weeks leading up to the party. 

She goes to her specialist a few days after her second first bloom. After a few x-rays, she’s told she has an advanced strain of Hanahaki and she assumed so considering how uncommon multispecies Hanahaki is. Talk of surgery comes up, but she’s quick to shoot it down. Her specialist tells her she won’t last long without immediate action to kill off the flowers. Tells her how aggressive the lilies must be to take root and fully bloom in one day. She lies and says she’ll think about it, that she’ll confess. 

Instead, she accepts it and tries to acclimate herself to the dual sensations. The burn of Raihan’s golden chains and the sharp pain of Xiao’s spider lilies. It’s not easy, the party provides an actual deadline for perfecting her act, but she tries and hopes that will be enough to get through the night. 

She overthinks her outfit, her makeup and her hair. The way she’s forced to look at herself each time feels like a punishment, forced to be reminded that she does exist and that her life isn’t just some joke with no punchline. Or maybe all of  _ this _ is the punchline. The Hanahaki, the party, Raihan and Xiao, every fucking thing that’s wrong with her.

_ I better be a funny joke, at least, _ She thinks as she pushes in a pair of earrings.  _ Why would all of this keep happening if I wasn’t? _

She can’t be late to this. Of course, she’d rather just skip it and stay home and order in too much and eat all of it. She knows that she’s an important guest, though. She and Kabu have to be present because at the end of the day, they’re Xiao’s favorite people. She’s not in the best headspace these days, but she can’t imagine going out of her way to make Xiao feel bad. 

Even if Xiao hurts her. 

Ze grabs Cinderace and Tsareena’s pokeballs and puts them in her purse next to her roll-on perfume and setting powder. She doesn’t know  _ why _ she’ll need them, but better safe than sorry. She locks and unlocks her door four times and shakes the handle, before pulling on her peacoat and calling the elevator. 

She stops by the head concierge and tells him she might be coming home late, that she’ll make sure to call if anything comes up to prevent that. He nods and wishes her a good evening and hopes she has fun at her event before she sets out. 

Once she’s out in the cold air she regrets not wanting to share a Taxi with Kabu. The time alone the walk gives her though is indispensable. She needs the time and most importantly the space to prepare for being faced with not just seeing Raihan for the first time off the pitch in what feels like forever, but of course, the happy couple. 

The cold wind does nothing to snuff out the fire in her chest and the deep breath she takes doesn’t pull the knife out of her either. She knows nothing so simple will. 

Ze has to lean against a lamp post at a street crossing. She’s out of breath and sweating already and she’s not even that far from home yet. Her lungs hurt with her deeper breaths and she realizes this is what the specialist meant when he told her that her condition has taken a turn for the worse. 

The group at the crosswalk starts moving and she moves with them. Now’s not the time for a break. 

Leon and Xiao’s house is bigger than most of the houses in Wyndon, which isn’t too hard, but is undeniably a show of wealth. What else should she expect from a former successful business woman and the Champion turned League Chairman? Not that Ze has too much room to talk, she’s no better living in a penthouse and rubbing elbows with the sons and daughters of Galar’s elite. It’s not the same as a million pound house though.

_ Their kids will probably end up in my school _ . She didn’t want to think about that, nevertheless it makes her stop and take a deep breath. She can feel someone’s eyes on her, watching her just standing outside the house, but she can’t help it, really. It’s bad enough they’ve lasted this long, kids probably aren’t too far in the future. She pushes the thought to the back of her mind as she heads up the pathway to their house. The lights are on and the curtains are open and Ze can clearly make out several other gym leaders. 

The door is opened before her knuckles can touch the door and she’s face to face with Xiao. 

“Ah, happy anniversary, Xiao!” If she sounds less than enthusiastic, Xiao doesn’t mind as she reaches out to Ze, pulling her into the warm house. Well, at least she hopes the warmth that overcomes her is from the house.

“Ze, do not tell me that you walked all the way here,”

She smiles sheepishly up at her friend. “Sorry, Xiao, but you know how I am with Flying Taxis,”

“You could have ridden on Flygon,”

“Higher the altitude, the colder it is,” 

She seems to pout a bit at that, but she drops the subject and smiles at Ze. The knife twists and Ze swallows down the rising urge to cough. She hasn’t even been here a minute and she’s already on the edge of a fit. 

“I suppose you are right, I am just glad you were able to make it,” It’s genuine, like everything from Xiao and Ze can’t help but smile back feeling like a lovesick schoolgirl. 

“Wouldn’t miss this for the world, Xiaodan,” Her full name slips out and Ze can’t say she meant to say it, but it seems to make her friend happier. 

Xiao steps back a bit, still playing hostess as she opens the coat closet, pulling a wooden hanger for Ze’s coat. They struggle for a bit as Ze insists she can hang her own coat and Xiao fires back that it would be rude of her as a hostess to not aid her guests. It’s Ze who relents this time, sighing at the pleased look on Xiao’s face as she gets her way. 

As Xiao does that Ze bends down to unlace her boots and toe them off, carefully so as to not dirty the floor. She follows Xiao further into their home, following the sound of voices and faint music. There’s nowhere to hide as all eyes fall to her and with a quick once over she realizes she is the last person to show. She holds back on her sigh. She really did make Xiao worry, huh?

Everyone turns back to their conversations soon enough, leaving Ze at Xiao’s side. How was she late to the party? Too many breaks, she figured. 

She lets Xiao lead her to where drinks were set up. Ze notices there is alcohol available, but she figures they don’t have to worry about any real kids since Bea and Allister weren’t invited to begin with. The only person Ze’s age is Hop since Bede is sick. She likes Hop, really. It’s just talking to anybody has started to feel like a chore. 

Ze wished that Xiao and Leon had asked for gifts, anything to distract Xiao for a minute. She hasn’t left Ze’s side since her arrival. 

As she pours her drink, she can hear someone getting closer. Ze turns to get out of their way, but no, it’s Leon and he’s coming to talk to her as well. She takes a drink of her water to hide her frown. 

_ Fuck me,  _ She thinks.  _ Should’ve just told them I’m dying to get out of this _ . Is that a terrible thing to think about her best friend’s anniversary party? Yeah, but she really can’t see this party ending well in her favor. 

“Ze, you made it!” There is nothing short of a grin on the former champion’s face as he approaches the two of them, one hand wrapping around Xiao’s waist once he gets close enough. It’s automatic, the way she responds with her own arms resting around his shoulders in a casual embrace. It’s enough to show just what sort of couple they are, with how naturally the movements come.

_It’s enough,_ the thought comes hot, scathing as Ze makes a point to keep her eyes to their faces and away from where the sight makes the knife twist and she finds herself swallowing back the urge to cough again in such a short span of time.

“You wouldn’t believe how much Xiao was looking out the window waiting for you, she looked just like a Yamper.” Somehow, the knife twists deeper when his comparison draws a blush from the once normally stoic wife. “Cute like one, at least!”

The tease is followed by an impish squeeze to Xiao’s side, and she can’t stop herself from playfully trying to push him away.

“Leon! I am so sorry, Ze,” the apology is given in a mix of giggles, before she calms to a more grateful smile. “Leon is just as happy that you are here. It means very much to us that you were able to make it, even with how busy you are.”

Ze’s other hand comes up to wrap around her glass as well, not wanting the couple to notice how her hand has balled up into a fist. She smiles. 

“Again, it’s fine Xiao, really,” Ze doesn’t know what to say, faced with gratefulness she doesn’t deserve. Xiao and Leon have no clue the kind of thoughts she’s had about the both of them. “We’re all friends, right?”

The word leaves a bad taste in her mouth. That’s all she is to anyone. A friend, nothing special. Even as a Champion, at the end of the day, she’s replaceable. 

At this point, she’s not even jealous of their relationship. It’s just awkward and uncomfortable witnessing them being so...them. They’re always like this, but somehow it’s worse at a party. There’s nowhere to run and at once Leon starts tickling Xiao’s side, Ze stops trying to hide her frown.

“ _ Xiao, this behavior isn’t becoming of a hostess, would you say? _ ” 

Ze perks up at the new voice, Kabu. It’s easy to miss him since all three of them are taller than the gym leader and Xiao and Leon are taller than Ze. It’s funny, the way Xiao and Leon jump apart in surprise, like two teenagers caught by a parent. No, that’s exactly what it is. 

Ze laughs and Kabu turns to her, his usual stern frown replaced with a warm smile. Xiao tries to explain herself and apologize, but she quiets down when Kabu turns his smile to her and reassures her that he was joking. Ze notices Leon looking at her, his smile tight, trying to ask for a translation silently. Ze just shrugs and plays dumb. 

It’s no fun messing with Leon if they give up too soon. 

Kabu congratulates Xiao, still speaking in their mother tongue before he heads to Ze’s side, setting his hand on her shoulder and it takes all of her self control to not lean into the fatherly touch. She loves Kabu’s presence, always has, but hearing him speak in a language she understood, but couldn’t speak like him and Xiao always made her feel like a disappointment.

She leans into his hand anyway, pressing her cheek against his rough weathered knuckles and closes her eyes, tired already. Kabu doesn’t move his hand and she smiles as he lets her do this. When Ze opens her eyes, Xiao and Leon are gone, mingling with the other guests. Kabu is looking over at her, brow furrowed in worry. 

“You’re a little warm tonight, Zenobia,” Still not Galarian. 

She just shrugs and blames it on her sweater. She doesn’t feel any warmer than usual, so it’s not a big deal. She lifts her cheek from Kabu’s hand and he takes his hand back. They stand there by themselves for a moment, Ze sipping her drink while Kabu pours himself a new one. The silence is nice. 

Ze remembers when silence was scary, it meant people didn’t care, didn’t hear her, now it’s just what she prefers. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s a thought gnawing at her, telling her Kabu doesn’t try because he doesn’t want to. So she wracks her brain, thinking of what to talk about to kill the silence between them. 

“Sorry about the Taxi thing. I just...wanted time to myself,” It’s painfully honest. If it was anyone else, she thinks she would have just lied before admitting that. 

He sighs, and she flinches. She hopes he didn’t notice.

“I assumed that was the situation. As a Gym Leader finding time for yourself, let alone privacy, is a difficult task. I cannot imagine what it must be like as Champion,”

Despite his kind words, he looks at Ze, brows furrowed still and eyes serious. The worst part of having a loving father-figure, the scolding.w

“However, you should not be risking your health, Zenobia,”

“Yeah, I know,”

The way his brows rise tells Ze that he wants to push the topic, but he doesn’t and she wants to thank him for it. She can’t imagine how he’d feel if he knew the current state of her health. 

She follows Kabu around the party, one hand holding her drink and the other holding the sleeve of his button up. She waits for Kabu to comment on her behavior, that a seventeen year old shouldn’t behave this way, especially not the Champion of a region, but it never comes. He keeps letting her hold on to him, and folds her into conversations easily, even his chat with Melony who coos over her like always. It’s nice and after Melony’s compliments she’s brave enough to let go of Kabu and wander around herself. 

It doesn’t last long.

She’s managed to avoid Raihan for the time she’s been at the party, but it’s when she’s talking with Hop that he calls Raihan over. They had been having a silly conversation, more catching up than anything. They talked about his work as Sonia’s assistant, about the silly stuff their legendary dogs get up to, about the tournament they faced each other in. Eventually the topic of dragon types came up, how she still hasn’t encountered a Deino in the wild.

“Is it weather conditions? I know Goomy only appears when it’s raining out there?”

She shrugs and insists that she’s run around in the rain plenty. She doesn’t expect Hop to call over Raihan or for him to walk over so easily. She can’t stop the cough that hits her, tucking her face into her elbow and turning from Raihan and Hop. The worst part of it all is how Hop reaches out to her, his hand on her shoulder as he asks if she’s ok, but Raihan...doesn’t say anything. 

She forces it down, ignores the harsh tightening of her chest for as long as she can before she’s pulling out of the conversation and giving Hop a little wave. 

The burn is intense as she straightens her back, looking for their back door. The party is in full swing and she’s sure no one notices her slip out of the house and out into the cold. Her breath is visible as she coughs up yellow and red. One cough is rough enough that she’s sure she’s going to puke into the snow, but she doesn’t.

She stands back up, kicks her flowers off the small stoop along with some snow to hide them. 

She slips back into the house and sighs. Her socks are now wet and squishing against the floor. She rolls her eyes and ignores the shiver that runs up her spine as she slips back into the living room. 

Now that she’s made contact with Raihan, he’s everywhere. He’s in the kitchen the same time she is, he’s finishing up a conversation with Kabu when she goes to find him. She can’t get away from him and she’s suffering the whole night. She  _ wants _ to talk to him, She wants to try, but every time he gets close her chest burns and she’s heading outside more and more.

It’s no better when it comes to Xiao either. It’s not easy to avoid someone in their home, Ze finds. There’s few pictures of her and Leon, but the home is full of her nonetheless. Vases full of red and white chrysanthemums, the red and black throw pillows dotting the sofas and chairs in the living room, a red blanket. 

It’s always red with her.

By the time Xiao announces that dinner is ready, Ze’s socks are soaked through and her purse is full of the flowers she could salvage. There’s no formal seating at the table, but there’s an unspoken rule of who sits with Leon and Xiao. Kabu, Ze, Hop and Raihan take their places next to their host and hostess and dinner is underway. 

Raihan is at Leon’s side and Ze lets Kabu take the spot next to Xiao. Ze does her best to ignore how Xiao begins to reach out before pulling her hand back to her lap. Kabu doesn’t say anything either, just raises a brow at Ze’s cold behavior. 

Beyond the permanent tickle in her chest and throat, dinner is lovely. The atmosphere is even more intimate, everyone loud and excited to be sharing time with their friends. While they all came together to celebrate Xiao and Leon’s love, it’s a celebration of the feeling in general. Ze, on the other hand, can’t. 

It’s not even the threat of flowers keeping her from talking, she just feels alone. In a room full of people, she feels empty and abandoned, struggling to smile. Why is this so hard? She was fine four months ago, she was doing well. Now she can’t even force herself to be happy for her best friend, can’t be bothered with being a good friend either. 

She doesn’t try with the conversation people try to pull her into, but she’s thankful for the steady noise that comes from everyone at the table. She can ignore Xiao and Raihan’s voices by focusing on Sonia and Nessa talking about Nessa’s recent modeling gig out in Kalos. Or Melony and Kabu discussing next year’s challenge and how there’s been so much more talent popping up these past two years.

She’s never allowed to ignore anything for long, though. 

As the noise dies down and people relax, full and content, there’s the sharp clink of silver on glass as Leon gets the table’s attention. Speech time. Ze turns her attention to Leon, now standing and smiling to their friends and colleagues. His eyes are glittering in the low light, excited for whatever it is he has planned. 

He thanks everyone for their arrival, tells the table how much it means to both him and Xiao for them to make time in their busy schedules for them. Piers chuckles and tells Leon how it’s his fault everyone’s so busy.

Leon laughs along, smiling wide as he raises a brow at Piers. “Piers, mate, you aren’t even a Gym Leader anymore and you’re still complaining about the league, are you?”

The air changes though as the laughter dies. It’s softer now, everyone allowing Leon the space he needs for what he wants to say. 

“I know that I’ll be earning eyerolls from the lot of you, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that from the very moment we met, I knew that I wanted to be with XiaoDan,”

Sure enough, Ze sees Piers roll his eyes and Marnie elbows him none too gently for it. She smiles at the display and turns back to Leon. She can’t help but notice Xiao’s face, her eyes warm with love and her cheeks a faint pink at her husband’s statement. Leon turns to her, holding his hand out to her, an offer she takes and rests her hand in his as he continues. 

“I knew that I was in love the moment I realized I never got lost finding my way to you,”

Ze’s lip twitches remembering the day Leon first met Xiao, how he rushed to get back to the Daycare after Raihan had sent him on his way. Ze would have dealt with him third wheeling and needling her with questions all day long if it had kept them from falling in love. At the time though, being with Raihan had been nice instead of a punishment. 

Ze doesn’t follow the rest of his speech, Leon always did have quite the mouth on him. She doesn’t miss how his smile changes though. How it softens from his Champion smile, the one he gave reporters and fans and Ze into the one only Xiao can get out of him. She feels that familiar sting of jealousy.

“It was thanks to you that I was able to become someone that could work on improving the here and now, for the sake of all that’s to come,”

And with that it’s over and Ze joins in the applause and listens to Nessa teasing Sonia about tearing up over her friend finally acting like an adult and being a wonderful husband. The applause stops as Xiao stands. She fixes her dress and for the first time all night Ze notices the color. 

It’s the same red as the spider lilies. 

Ze closes her eyes and breaths, steady and controlled. She can’t leave now, there’s no slipping out of the back door here, but she can imagine the ground opening up beneath her and swallowing her whole. Can pretend she’s at home for a moment, or that when she opens her eyes she’ll be in her room and it’ll be August and this will all have been some horrible dream. 

When she opens them, she’s still at the party and Xiao is still in that red, getting ready to address the table and be as disgustingly in love with her husband as Ze is with her. 

Tonight Ze can see just how different Xiao is now than she was when they first met. She’s expressing herself, her face isn’t stoic and her eyes aren’t cold anymore. She’s open and warm, she’s glowing, radiating happiness that she found with Leon. 

_ Happiness she never would have found with someone like you,  _ She thinks. 

“I would be lying, if one were to ask me who my ideal type was and I stated it was someone flashy like Leon,”

More laughter, but Ze can’t help but wonder if she could have been Xiao’s type. If Leon wasn’t her type, why did they click so well, how did they fall for each other in a month? What is she missing?

Xiao squeezes Leon’s hand before continuing, and Ze clenches hers as well. Ze’s forced to recognize how perfect their hands are, how well they fit together. Her throat tickles as she remembers how her hand fit in Raihan’s, his too big and hers so small. Her hands haven’t grown since then.

“But, knowing that, it only makes Leon that much more special. To be someone I did not think I could fall in love with, and yet now fills my heart everyday with that very feeling because of him,”

Xiao pauses, but no one speaks, no one moves as she and Leon look at each other in some silent conversation. The acknowledgement of how impossible their relationship is, how so far they’ve defied the odds, how they’re thriving makes this so much worse for Ze. She would have ruined her relationship with Raihan by now, surely. Driven him away in her fear and jealousy, her love for another person. 

“Thank you for loving me, as well, Leon,”

Sweet and simple, but to the point. It’s Xiaodan through and through and she hates it. Ze hates how her eyes are welling up with tears, hates wondering if she’ll ever have someone love her so genuinely. She hates how the person she wants to love her is seated at the same table and has decided to ignore her in a way she cannot ignore him.

Xiao looks from Leon and to the table, but her eyes fall to Ze as she closes her speech. Ze can’t help but cry as Xiao smiles at her, warm and happy, reminding Ze of what she’ll never truly obtain. 

“Thank you, everyone, for all of your kindness and support.”

The moment she can, Ze rushes out of the house and into the snow, flowers threatening to spill out like her tears in front of everyone. It hurts as she coughs hard enough that it feels like her ribcage is shaking and her throat screams, raw and sensitive. When she falls to her knees from the overbearing pain in her chest and throat, she notices the specks of red on yellow, that there’s two shades of red in the lilies. She notices the drops of blood melting the snow and the sharp metallic taste in her mouth. 

Her breathing is rough and labored. She touches her hand to her mouth, shocked. 

“I’m not in the advanced stages already, am I?” Her voice is barely above a whisper as she speaks, but it still hurts. 

She starts crying again, desperately trying not to be loud, wanting somewhere to be alone again. She just wants to go home. She starts coughing through her tears, lungs still forcing up full bloomed flowers. The ones she bit back, the ones she tried to ignore all night. She doesn’t hear the door open, or their gasp of horror as she coughs up more flowers and blood into the snow. 

She doesn’t realize how cold she is until someone’s coat is covering her. She slaps her hand over her mouth, holding back her scream and her flowers as she turns to face Kabu. She’s never seen the look on his face before, she doesn’t know what to call it, but his hands are warm as he takes her hand to help her up.

_ He’s already seen _ , She thinks as she drops her hand and tilts her head down to continue coughing, a small pile growing between their feet. He doesn’t speak as she empties her lungs. She doesn’t blame him. What do you say when you see someone’s love killing them?

She’s done. He pulls her close to him, his warmth welcoming as she wraps her arms around him and cries more. He feels like home should feel. Warm and safe, secure and loving. He grips her arms through his coat and pulls her away to look her in the eye. 

“ _ Why didn’t you tell anyone _ ?”

She’s hiccuping as she speaks, but she tells him anyways. She wants to tell someone. “I can’t tell either of them,”

“... _ Who are they _ ?”

“Raihan and Xiao,” She smiles, empty and sad. Her lips are quivering and her voice cracked on their names. 

His eyes darken and he frowns as his eyebrows turn up, pitying her. “I don’t know what to say, Zenobia,”

“Neither do I,” She admits. “What do you say to someone that knows you love them and someone that can’t love you?”

_ What do I say when I know no one can love me?  _ She thinks.

He asks if she wants to go home.

“More than anything,”

He leaves her with his jacket and Salazzle. It’s nice how Salazzle is quick to push her snout up to Ze’s face, her forked tongue lapping up her tears. Ze knows how dangerous the lizard is, but right now all Salazzle sees is a crying child and Ze lets the pokemon dote on her. She just wishes a person would care about her like this. 

In the short while that Kabu is gone, Salazzle has pressed herself flush against Ze, the pokemon’s body heat warming her up. It would have been a silly moment, the way Ze had partially buttoned them both up in Kabu’s coat if she wasn’t so cold and exhausted from the party.

Salazzle hisses as the back door opens, stopping once she sees it’s her trainer walking out. Kabu calls her back before placing Ze’s boots in front of her. She feels like a little kid again with the way she braces herself against Kabu’s broad shoulders while he pulls off her wet socks, pulls her boots on her feet and laces them up for her. 

“I called a Flying Taxi and told Leon that you felt too sick to stay,”

She wanted to get mad at him, ask why he’d tell Leon that when she just wanted to disappear. She can’t do that though, or more like Kabu won’t let her be so cowardly as to leave with no word. She mumbles her thanks and leans into his side as he walks her around the house to the front where they don’t wait long for a Taxi. 

She sleeps the whole ride and doesn’t ask why they’re at his house when they land. 

She just wants to go to sleep and not wake up.

* * *

She wakes up in Kabu’s guest room. 

The room is warm and the curtains are open, the morning’s dim grey light shining through the room. Her throat hurts like hell and her mouth tastes gross. Ninetales is on the bed with her, cuddled up to her side. Ze smiles and pats the fox on his head. He lifts his head to sniff at her hand, making a soft chuffing noise as he settles back on top of the blanket.

“Kabu doesn’t let you up here, does he?”

Ninetales looks at her, eyes half lidded and yawns. Ze leans up to press a kiss to his snout before laying back down. As she lies back, she notices the door is open and she can smell something cooking, but she can’t quite place it despite how familiar the scent is.

It’s odd for the fox to be so pleasant, but she’s not in the mood to question him. For all she knows Ninetales is legitimately worried about her. Kabu’s team has known her long enough to have caregiver tendencies towards her, even the ones that typically don’t have strong parental instincts such as Salazzle.

She doesn’t want to check her phone, but she does. It’s close to eight in the morning. She can’t remember when she and Kabu left or when he put her to sleep, but she’s still dead tired. She sighs as she sees the texts from Leon and Xiao wishing her a speedy recovery, thanking her for coming to the party and that they missed her for the night. 

“Missed what? All I did was mope around and sneak out the door constantly,” She mumbles to her phone. She texts Leon, apologizing for her sudden departure and that she had a good time despite her illness. All lies. 

She startles as Leon calls her the moment it comes up that he read her text. 

“What the fuck, Leon. Who does this?”

She picks up, knowing he’ll only worry further if she were to ignore him as if she didn’t just text him. 

“Hey, Lee,” She winces at her voice, grim and gravelly. “I’m sorry I had to leave out of nowhere,”

“Ze, don’t apologize. I’m happier knowing you didn’t force yourself for us, just focus on getting some rest and feeling better, yeah?” He’s quiet too and she doesn’t know why. There’s no way Xiao isn’t awake as well, she wakes up earlier than him usually. 

She closes her eyes and she can imagine him so vividly. His long hair messy from sleep, standing outside their room or in the kitchen, leaning into his phone.

“I...I thought I could handle it for the night at least,” 

_ Wrong as always _ , She thinks.

“Well, either way, I’m glad Kabu helped you home,” She doesn’t see the point in correcting him. Leon doesn’t need to know that she is at Kabu’s, that he was too worried for her to leave her alone for the night. She’s about to respond to him when he continues. 

“Xiao was worried when her two favorite people left so sud—” Ze hangs up on him and tosses her phone back on the bedside table. 

She rolls over and coughs up Xiao’s bright red lilies. It’s disgusting, but thinking of Leon’s face, confused and hurt soothes the sharp pain in her chest and the raw burn of her throat. She doesn’t stop coughing for a bit, Ninetales watching her intently before barking loudly. Calling for Kabu. 

_So that’s why you’re being so nice_ , She thinks. _Little traitor_ ,

Ze hears Kabu before he appears in the doorframe, wearing a crisp white apron and casual clothes. Centiskorch is close behind him, chittering excitedly when he sees that Ze is awake. Kabu blocks the fire bug as he tries to slip into the room. He gives his signature a stern look and Centiskorch pulls back, staying behind his trainer. 

Kabu walks into the room and reaches past her to pick up one of the spider lilies. His frown stays as he examines the flower, but his brow relaxes and turns up. Ze rolls back over to face away from his pitying eyes. The Hoenn native probably knows the flowers well, better than Ze’s search on the internet. She doesn’t need him reiterating how hopeless she is, that she’s coughing up corpse flowers. A symbol of just how fucked she is. 

He sighs behind her before sitting on the edge of the mattress. It’s quiet between them for a moment. 

“ _ I haven’t seen red spider lilies in a long time, Zenobia, _ ” He’s not speaking in Galarian, he doesn’t in his home or when they’re alone. “ _ There’s no happy occasion to see these really, but even a funeral is happier than this _ ,”

“Imagine living it then,” Her voice isn’t her own, she doesn’t recognize the sharp edge, the venom laced words.

“ _ I can’t _ ,” He sounds tired. “ _ I can’t imagine being foolish enough to hide my feelings to such an extent. At this point, what is the worst that could happen _ ?” 

_ Raihan could tell me he doesn’t love me anymore. That he pretended to care once he realized how messed up I am. Xiao would be disgusted with me, or worse try to comfort me and pity me. I have to get the surgery or die.  _

“...I don’t think I could handle knowing neither of them love me,”

Another sigh from him. 

“ _ I don’t know Raihan’s feelings for you, but I know Xiao loves you, Zenobia _ ,”

The words set her off, but she doesn’t yell and scream about how that love means nothing to her like she wants to. She doesn’t scratch herself until she bleeds anymore. She just curls up, presses her face into the pillow beneath her and refuses to talk to him. 

She can’t just say it’s not enough for her. She wants more from Xiao, she wants what Leon stole, but she can’t just say that to someone. That’s greedy, it’s selfish of her to think of Xiao like this. Not to mention she hasn’t loved Xiao for so long, she was content being her friend...or was she? Has she always resented Leon like this, despite how much he has helped her these past two years? 

Why does she ruin everything?

Those thoughts settle over her, weighing her down, chaining her to the bed as she sobs into Kabu’s pillows. She feels Kabu push her hair back and he presses a kiss to her temple, but she doesn’t care, doesn’t feel loved. She just feels like a monster for not loving Raihan enough to not love someone else. 

Kabu doesn’t leave her as she starts coughing again. He rubs her back and mumbles soft, comforting words in their native tongue. She coughs up golden chains this time and she barely registers the pain now. When she’s finished, Kabu picks them up carefully, cradling them in his hands as he asks if she wants to save any of them. She shakes her head, she asks to be alone.

He hesitates, but leaves her.

Ninetales yelps and moves out of the way as Centiskorch skitters up to her side. The fox growls and yips before leaving the two of them in bed and seeks out Kabu. Ze pulls the sheets up, shielding herself from his heat as he clicks and chirps worryingly over her. He gets the message and she can feel the heat from his coils and face die down. Ze reaches up, scratching the bug’s chin, just above his mouth. He wiggles excitedly and Ze can feel him cool down further as he settles into bed with her. 

This isn’t what she wanted, but it’s nicer this way. 

She could fall back asleep like this, warm beyond her chest and held down by Centiskorch, but the fire reminds her of Cinderace which reminds her of Tsareena. She flies out of bed, startling Centiskorch as she grabs her purse, tossing out lilies and golden chains in her haste. 

“Oh my god, you guys didn’t have dinner last night. I was supposed to get home and feed you,” She’s mumbling, frantic and worried. She can’t find them amongst the flowers, perfume and makeup. Her sight turns fuzzy as she stands too quickly and she stumbles. Her head hurts and her panic is only making her feel worse. “I brought them to the party, right?”

Ze doesn’t hear chirping and calling from another pokemon as she wracks her brain, trying to figure out if she misplaced them at the party somehow or if she brought them at all. Soon enough, there’s a tight hold around her middle, squeezing and yanking her to the source. She lands in her Tsareena’s arms, the grass type holding her trainer close and chirruping in her ear. It’s awkward, even when her Tsareena is taller than average, she’s still a solid foot and a bit shorter than Ze. Before Ze can attempt to struggle in her pokemon’s hold a sweet, heady scent wafts through the air, loosening her up, making her muscles relax.

Tsareena drags her trainer to the bed, and sits with Ze, holding the girl to her small frame. She pets Ze’s hair, nuzzling her face gently. Ze remembers when she did this back when her pokemon had been a little Bounsweet, the smallest on her team before she evolved. 

“Thank you, Persimmon,” Talking is difficult as Persimmon’s natural fragrance fills her lungs, making her thoughts slip away from her as she’s forced to relax. 

The grass type chirps once more at her trainer, but doesn’t leave her side either. Centiskorch skitters around the two of them, situating his long body around them, carefully setting his head in Ze’s lap. Being with them is easy, easier than being with people that expect so much from her. Even when they don’t expect anything, she still feels the pressure to perform, to live up to the title of Champion. With pokemon, including ones that don’t belong to her, she’s just Ze. Even if she doesn’t remember who “just Ze” is. 

There’s a polite cough at the door and three sets of eyes fall on Kabu, standing there smiling at the sight before him. 

“ _ Breakfast is ready if you want it, _ ”

Her head is heavy and her limbs feel like jelly, but she’s hungry enough to get up and follow Kabu to his kitchen. He doesn’t let her set the table or plate her own food, but he kisses the top of her head as he puts breakfast in front of her. 

Breakfast is always simple with him and today is no different. Fried fish with rice and daikon miso soup. It’s been so long since she’s been to Kabu’s home, she doesn’t remember how old she was, but she remembers having to look up at him.

This time the silence between them is comfortable, despite all the questions in the air between them. For a moment, Ze forgets what’s wrong with her.

Until Kabu is holding her hair back as she throws up breakfast. Again, she isn’t sure when she started crying, but Kabu doesn’t leave her side. 

* * *

She has to leave Kabu’s eventually.

Her team is still at the suite and they need to be fed as well. He takes the ride up to Wyndon with her, letting her clutch his arm as she tries to ignore the sensation of being in the air in a metal box. He’s not just riding with her because of her fear either. Under his other arm there’s several tupperwares full of food, from plain white rice, to fish and chicken. All simple enough that she shouldn’t get sick after eating again. 

Ze apologizes to the head concierge, letting him know that she had been in a position where she wasn’t well enough to call. He reassures Ze that it is no fault of her own, getting sick and that Kabu had been kind enough to call the hotel late last night to inform them of her whereabouts. 

She’s never been fond of the elevator being mirrored but this morning her appearance hits her hard. She’s never been the kind of person to pale, or really look ill when she was. However, this morning her eyes are puffy and she’s a shade or two lighter than her usual complexion. She can’t stand to look at herself. 

The suite isn’t dirty, but it’s still embarrassing having him here, scrutinizing the furniture and the way nothing really belongs to her. She’s been there for a year, but the suite still looks like it’s straight from a catalogue. She’s just too busy to do anything but sleep here, not to mention she spends all her time up in her room.

He doesn’t say anything as he heads to her kitchen to put away the food he brought for her. She leaves him to retrieve her team from her room and sets their pokeballs on the counter as she prepares their breakfasts. It’s quick and Kabu offers to help her, but she declines. She can do this right at least. She’s been doing it for them for practically three years now. 

Soon enough, five bowls of her team’s premium food mixed with thick slices of their favorite berries are ready. She asks Kabu to place the bowls in specific places, the living room is large enough to keep them from eating on top of each other, so she might as well keep them separated during mealtime. 

When she releases her team, none of her pokemon rush to their bowls like usual. They all crowd Ze, checking their trainer, greeting her after such a long time apart. They’ve all gotten used to her being home, not even leaving for classes as she is homebound for school. She’s been with them on a near constant basis for these past few weeks, so her being somewhere else overnight is strange. 

She has to urge them off her, she’s close to being toppled over by her overbearing pack before they back off and head to their bowls. She collapses onto her couch, sinking into the cushy leather and seriously considering taking a nap already. Her team is grown up, they’re all mature enough that she doesn’t have to supervise them 24/7, why shouldn’t she rest for a bit?

She lays down, not bothering to get a blanket and content to sleep in her clothes from the night before, however Kabu has other plans for her. 

He pulls her up by her arm, he’s gentle with her, but it still hurts, how his fingers press into her arm fat. He tells her she’s not sleeping on the couch and to get in the shower. 

“ _ I’ll still be here, Ze, _ ” It was nice at first, him caring for her, but she’s not a child. She yanks her arm from him and gets up from the couch too fast. She’s dizzy for a moment, but she steadies herself and grabs Tsareena’s pokeball before heading up to her bathroom. 

She knows why he’s sticking around, she’s exhausted. At this point, she’s liable to slip and fall in the shower. Really, she should take a bath, but she’s too grimy for that and she’s sure that she’d fall asleep in warm water right now. Tsareena is kind enough to Ze most days, but she’s never gentle about waking her trainer. Ze really can’t handle being on the receiving end of another Power Whip.

Thankfully, the shower is uneventful. Tsareena keeps a close eye on Ze, making sure her trainer doesn’t die and the hot water eases the pain in her chest. When she steps out, she’s not as exhausted as when she stepped in. 

With Kabu around, Ze sticks to getting dressed in her bathroom. Every time she’s made to do this she hates it. The steam keeps her from drying off completely and her clothes stick to her when she dresses. It makes her shower feel pointless, it’s like she’s gross and sweaty all over again and it pisses her off each time. 

Her anger from something so small sticks with her and settles under her skin. It’s an itch she can’t scratch and she tries to. She’s rougher with washing her face, scrubbing her skin red and she isn’t gentle as she combs through her damp hair, ripping her comb through her curls. Some part of it is nice, hurting herself in such small ways. Her stinging skin and sore scalp serve as a reminder. She can’t say what she’s reminding herself of, but it feels like the right thing to do to herself. It makes some of her anger dissipate. 

That is until she’s in her room and her things are different. Her sheets are changed, her desk less cluttered, the flowers are untouched but somehow all it does is bring that anger back, just under the surface of her skin. Her room wasn’t just her room, in the last few weeks it became the only place she was safe. From worried eyes, prying questions, from every little thing that forces her to remember what happened to her. 

She hears him sigh behind her and she turns to face him. She can’t remember ever being mad at Kabu and she knows she’s never been so angry in front of him. He seems unfazed by her anger, and it makes it worse, bubbling over into rage. She waits for him to explain himself. 

“ _ I know you don’t like this, but _ —”

“What do you know, Kabu?” She doesn’t want to be yelling, but what else is she supposed to do? Nothing is working, nothing fits except this. Yelling and screaming, it’s what worked on her. “You spent so much time with her I’m surprised you remembered me. And now you want to pretend you care about me again, act like I mean anything to you!”

She is too tired to cry, but she chokes like she is. Her throat is tight and she wants to force it open, she’s not done. When will she be done?

He’s calm in the face of her rage, her screaming and accusations. He’s always been so hard to faze in any meaningful way, even his eyes don’t betray any hurt on his part. That’s all she wants. She just wants him to hurt too. 

“ _ Is this about XiaoDan? _ ” Yes, yes, yes. Everything comes back to her, love and hate. Fear and doubt and all of Ze’s self loathing. It did not start with Xiao, but her presence hasn't softened any pain on her end.

“Of course it’s about her! You loved me and then she showed up! She became your favorite so quickly and where did that leave me?”

The bad daughter. The one that can’t speak like them. Forgotten. Left to her mother’s curry shop. Left to strangers. She knows, even through all her anger and hate, that none of what happened to her was Kabu’s fault.

There’s nothing he could have done about it, it’s not like she opened up to him. How do you tell someone that cares about you how filthy you are, though? Ze didn’t know at eight or fifteen and she doesn’t know at seventeen. The answer seems to slip further from her everyday.

“Zenobia,” Galarian, dangerous territory. Some twisted kind of giddiness fills her as she realizes she’s gotten under his skin somehow. Flint grey eyes seem to brighten, be with anger or understanding, she doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. “You know what Xiao was going through, she needed me then,”

Her fists tighten more, her nails dig into the flesh of her palms and the stinging pain distracts her. It feels good when everything else hurts. She feels tears welling though and she doesn’t want him seeing that, seeing even more weakness from her. 

“What about me, then? What made me so…”  _ What am I? _ “Unlovable?”

The weight of the word settles in her stomach and she feels sick and so unbearably heavy. Her hands loosen and her fingers twitch at her side as her anger evaporates as quickly as it appeared. 

“You are no—”

He stops when she looks up at him. What must she look like for him to stop like that?

“I needed help too, Kabu. Were you so busy with Xiao that you couldn’t see how much I changed?”

_ You were so busy loving someone else that you left me too,  _ She thinks. She wants to say it, but like this morning the words already hang between them. They settle into the tense air between them. It’s like she’s on the pitch and she doesn’t lose there. She doesn’t lose here either. 

She tells him to leave and he does. 

She can’t recall when winning ever felt like this as she throws up petals and her breakfast.

* * *

Leon’s worried about her health enough that he’s planning to give her early Holiday. Not before a mandatory meeting between them, though. There’s always a catch. 

She's only gotten worse since the party. Kabu hasn’t talked to her since she yelled at him. She can’t blame him but she does file it away, makes herself remember this. It’s her fault, yet she can’t help but think of it as another abandonment. Good.

He deserves something better than Ze. 

Wyndon is only getting colder and colder. The deep chill settles through her coat and does its best to lull her to sleep every time she stops during her walk. It’s admittedly a little hard to resist the urge to go home to rest and skip this meeting. Her eyes are heavy and unfocused behind her glasses and she doesn’t have the same easy gait anymore. Even then, sleeping doesn’t sound appealing, just the better option. Sleeping is just making her tired. 

She still insists on walking everywhere. She can’t stand the idea of contact with strangers or being in such close quarters with anyone. She figures all the walking is paying off though. What with the way her shirts now slouch on her frame and she needs to tighten her belt more. She thought she’d be happier with such progress, but all she feels is nothing. She wishes her breasts didn’t shrink with her waist, though. They’ve always been the only part of her worth looking at.

It’s thankfully not too long of a walk to the Battle Tower. Despite her school uniform throwing off passersby, the people at the front desk of the Tower recognize her immediately and send her up to Leon’s office. 

Ze hasn’t bothered trying to face the Battle Tower, she didn’t really like being in the place. Even with the life Leon’s managed to breathe into the facility it is still clinical to her, large and intimidating with too much space. 

Knowing what this was about, that this meeting is about her, does nothing to lessen the impact of Leon’s worried gaze. Ze entertains the idea that Kabu ratted her out, ran and told Leon about the disease after their fight. Maybe she would have done that, but Kabu is a better person than her, he’d never tell someone her personal issues. 

So why does Leon care if he doesn’t know? 

The way he greets her is in direct contrast to his eyes and face. He’s cordial, she doesn’t expect anything less from him, but he doesn’t move from behind his desk. His words are measured as he gestures to one of the chairs in front of him. They are not friends or even coworkers at this moment. She’s the Champion and he’s her handler, the Chairman of the League. 

As she tucks her skirt behind her knees and settles into one of the chairs, she looks directly at the vase of red and white chrysanthemums on his desk. She anticipates the sharp pain in her chest to pick up. Her eyes widen slightly as her chest burns instead. She folds her hands in her lap to keep from reaching up to her chest. In all her feelings surrounding Xiao, she almost forgot about Raihan. 

She realizes that she’s sitting there staring and feuling whatever theory Leon might have about her health. She apologizes for spacing out. He smiles and nods, forgiving her easily, but she knows he’s watching her closer than he’s letting on. Being watched so closely isn’t new, for Ze, but here with Leon, it’s uncomfortable. She squeezes her hands together as Leon speaks. 

“How have you been, Ze?”

She tries to smile, but she knows she’s past the point of convincing the Chairman. “I’ve been good. I’ve been doing better with my classes, keeping up with the work isn’t as difficult as last term was,”

Leon smiles again and she has to stop herself from bouncing her leg, cracking her knuckles, anything to cut her nerves. Facing him here in his office, only a desk separating them is a task more daunting than facing him on the pitch. Somehow, he manages to make it feel like there’s a pitch worth of space between them, though. 

“That’s good to know, Ze,” It’s genuine enough, but he continues. “How have  _ you _ been?”

He leans forward, elbows braced on his desk and hands folded over his face. Her lip twitches and her smile tightens.

“What’s the point of this meeting, Chairman?” It’s sharp and bitter, straight to the point and it catches him off guard. 

It’s quick, but his brows quirk and he chuckles, but it’s humorless. Honestly, there’s nothing funny about anything happening between them as Ze lets her smile drop and leans back into her chair. 

“You’ve never called me “Chairman” before, Ze,”

He’s wrong technically, she’s called him Chairman plenty, but it was always a joke between them, him holding a position so serious in nature. No one thought it suited him, the media had a field day about how drastic the change was from being the talent to managing it. No matter how great of a Champion he was, everyone out of their inner circle underestimates him the same way they underestimate Ze and Raihan. 

“A lot has changed. Is that what this meeting is about?”

“In a way, Ze,” He sighs, hands pulling from his face. “What’s happening? You’re acting differently these days,”

She wants to yell again, but it’s been hard to get angry since her and Kabu’s fight. It’s as if the fight made some kind of void in her and every emotion she could have is just slipping through, making her some shell of who she used to be. Why can’t she just tell him that? He doesn’t  _ have _ to know about the Hanahaki, about her and Raihan. How she feels about his wife of all people. 

She can’t open her mouth, she just stares. How does she tell someone she needs help without being a burden, some kind of leech they’ll pull off eventually. As they should. 

“I...I don’t know, Leon,” She’s relieved, she doesn’t sound as pathetic as she feels. Her voice doesn’t shake, but her chest starts to hurt. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,”

His eyes soften and the distance closes between them in that second. 

“I know Kabu told us you weren’t feeling well at the party, but that was nearly two weeks ago. Then you hung up on me the next morning,” 

She looks down at her lap when he mentions that. He’s not scolding her, but she still feels like she’s been called to the Headmaster’s office. 

“...I’m sorry about that. I was just tired and frustrated,”

“Ze, you don’t have to apologize to me, I just want to help you,”

It’s her turn to laugh and it’s bitter, sarcastic. She wants to believe it’s not her, but who else is she?

“What’s the point, you’ll just hate me when I tell you,”

“You don’t know that, Ze,”

“It’s what everyone else has done!” Her head snaps back up to him, chest on fire and knife twisting. She starts coughing and there’s no flowers, but she doesn’t care as she braces her hands on his desk. 

Leon hurries to her side, but she’s standing before he can reach her. She’s still coughing and tears are falling now. She wished the flowers would come so he’d quit pushing for this, quit while he’s ahead and give up on her.

Her coughing turns wet as her mouth starts to taste funny. She tucks her head down and coughs into her hand. Leon’s hand is on her shoulder and she tenses. She’s scared, but Leon’s never hurt her. Why is she scared of him? She’s doing her best to swallow her blood back, but it’s hard. Her throat is raw and swallowing isn’t so easy these days. 

Her voice is hoarse as she tells Leon that she wants to leave. She repeats herself when he doesn’t let go of her immediately, and she shoves his hands off of her. Her palm slips against the back of his hand as her blood rubs off onto him, but she doesn’t care, she’s leaving. 

She doesn’t get too far from Leon’s office, though. Xiao must have heard the commotion because she’s walking out of her office as Ze makes her way to the elevator. Ze hears her name being called, but she ignores it and Xiao doesn’t get the hint. Xiao’s gentle as she grabs Ze’s arm but it makes her skin crawl and her tears run faster. 

“Don’t touch me,” It’s a whisper and her voice cracks from overuse, but Xiao hears her and she lets go. 

Ze can’t focus on any of her questions, she’s light-headed. She isn’t fast enough to cough into her hand and her blood hits the floor. Xiao stops. It’s quiet. 

She doesn’t want to be mad, but when Xiao asks Ze what’s wrong, she snaps. She wants to confess, tell Xiao she’s the problem, that she still loves her. How she’s tried to ignore it, that she was over it, but she’s come back to her. She can’t stop about how Xiao saved her, that she was the first person to put themselves in danger to help her. Xiao was the first person that made Ze think she was maybe worth helping. 

But she doesn’t.

Instead she smiles. 

“It must be nice to have someone isn't it, Xiao? I mean, I can't imagine it, but it's nice how Leon ignored how young you were when he proposed?” 

Ze takes it back. She loves how expressive Xiao has become. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have looked so hurt. Ze laughs again, but she hasn’t stopped crying. Her laugh isn’t as happy as she is. 

“Getting to be together must be very nice, huh, XiaoDan?"

She has so much more she wants to say, but she can’t find the words. The right ones. Ones that will make Xiao hurt too, but her hurt won’t last. Being together must be very nice. Leon’s here to help Xiao, that’s what marriage is. 

Xiao pulls away from Ze completely and Ze leaves. 

* * *

The whole walk home she’s thinking about what she could have said to Xiao.

That it really is nice that she has Leon, someone to care about her. Meanwhile, Raihan doesn’t talk to her, he didn’t even look at her at the party. It’s what’s best for her, though. It’s not like she can bear to be around him either. The burning in her chest doesn’t stop as quickly and it forces her to think of him. 

She thinks of what they could have been if he wasn’t so nice to her. If he didn’t think of her, didn’t consider her well being like every other man that held some kind of interest in her. 

Would they have overcome her problems together, like Leon and Xiao? She’s not so far gone as to think she’s worth anything like XiaoDan, though, but allows herself the comfort of imagining Raihan holding her through her episodes instead of her holding a pillow. It always leads to her thinking of how gentle he was with her when they kissed, even when they fought. You don’t treat someone like this unless you love them, right? 

Ze can’t bring herself to imagine the other possible outcome out here in public. She’s imagined it, though. When she’s by herself and that recurrent void fills her with thoughts of Raihan hurting her, his rough hands around her throat, his teeth deep in her shoulder. He calls her everything but her name in those little fantasies. It’s hard to think she deserves more than that from him, why shouldn’t he abuse her too. 

At least it would be Raihan, not some strange man.

Her worst fantasy, though, is her newest. At the end of these three years, it won’t matter. This pain, her love, it’ll all just be the world’s cruelest joke when he tells her he didn’t love her anymore or at all. 

She doesn’t know how she makes it to the Rose of Rondelands on her own. Her sight is fucked from her crying, there’s no point in stopping to wipe the tears from the lenses of her glasses. She’d be stopping every second if she did. 

Ze zips through the lobby fast enough that no one can think to ask her what’s wrong. She just wants to sleep.

So she does.

* * *

She wakes up in total darkness. 

“Rotom, what time is it?”

No answer. 

She sighs. Of course she didn’t put her phone on the charger last night, which means Rotom is occupying something else in her apartment. Or he’s sleeping too. 

She swings her legs over the side of her bed and gets up to turn on her lights. She winces and dims the lights quickly. Her room is still clean from when Kabu cleaned it. She’d be shocked if she hadn’t been living in the same pair of house clothes for the past few days. There’s no laundry if she doesn’t make some.

Hell, it’s not like she has to shower either. Tsareena isn’t breathing down her neck to take proper care of herself. She left her team up at the Wild Area Daycare when she finished her final charity battle of the quarter. It leaves the suite eerily quiet, but it takes another weight off her shoulders, not having to worry about them. Not having to care for them gives her all the time in the world to do nothing but rot away between her sheets. 

She’ll admit, she has not been the best at recognizing warning signs in her life. Itt’s how she gained her reputation, how she was taken advantage of. Looking back, she’s started to think it’s all been willful ignorance on her part, that she did want to be wanted. No matter how much it hurt. However, she couldn’t ignore what it meant to wake up and see her team, her babies, and not feel anything. 

So she sent them away. She understood Aayna leaving her behind in Hoenn as she made that call. 

Her team not being here puts her in a weird place, though. The kind of place where she’s not planning to kill herself, but she’s been avoiding the knives in her cutlery drawer and not shaving. She’s started thinking who she’d leave her team to if she did it. How do you ask the people you screamed at and insulted and accused to care for your pokemon?

She wasn’t too mean with Leon, but she did say all that stuff to Xiao. He probably hates her if Xiao doesn’t, but his love for Charizard would make him willing to take Dand —She needs to charge her phone.

She shuffles to back to her bed and searches for her phone in her nest of blankets and pillows and plugs it in. It’s embarrassing how she hovers over it, sitting down and waiting for it to get enough of a charge to turn it back on, but it’s been her only connection to anything outside of her suite. 

It’s funny that she’s kind of suicidal, kind of not when she’s this far along with Hanahaki. She can feel it in the way breathing is a chore instead of second nature. In the way her fatigue is exhaustion most of the time and how opening her eyes is too hard sometimes. As if they’re trying to stay closed forever. 

When she gets too far along with these thoughts she tells herself she’ll be gone soon enough. Every available surface of her room is covered in flowers. It used to be pretty. Pretty enough to love and pretty enough to forget what they are doing to her, but these past few days they’re coming up dead. It’s one of the final symptoms of late stage Hanahaki. 

The flowers don’t bloom anymore, they push out of her lungs already ruined and covered in her blood.

She tries the power button on her phone and the screen lights up white before cutting back on. There’s the usual flood of notifications. Pidgetter and Instagram, then her text and call notifications. It’s been mostly Xiao and Leon trying to reach out to her. She really should get back to them, but now that the dust has settled on her side, she is scared of what they’ll say. Kabu recently started calling too. 

She wonders if Xiao told him what Ze said to her. Xiao doesn’t know the deeper meaning of why Ze said all of that to her. To Xiao, Ze was just insulting her marriage and her husband. Kabu knows, though. He’s known about Raihan, about their plan to wait for her to be in a better place, not to mention of legal age, before they dated. 

He approved of their choice, she assumes he was just relieved they didn’t do something as ridiculous as getting engaged after only knowing each other for a month. 

“Maybe we should have,” She says to her phone. “We tried so hard to do the right thing, who knows? The wrong thing might have been the answer,”

_ Unlike Leon and Xiao we actually have problems,  _ She thinks. Ze winces at her bitter thoughts. Xiao has plenty of issues and Leon’s no better sometimes.  _ They just got lucky, unlike you.  _

“Whatever,” She sighs through her nose as she pushes up off her bed.

Before she can leave her room, her phone starts vibrating, loud against her bedside table. She hesitates, she’s far enough out of her episode that her head isn’t so heavy with her bitter, paranoid thoughts that no one loves her, but...How can they love her now?

She rushes to her phone fast enough that her lungs seize in protest, but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t even check who it is before answering. 

“Hello?” It comes out quick and jumbled in her accent, but not unrecognizable. 

“Zenobia ,” It’s Kabu. It’s difficult recognizing his voice over the phone when he speaks Galarian, but it’s him and she wants to cry.

She doesn’t realize she has been holding her breath until it bites her in the ass. Her hand covers her mouth as she begins to cough. She sounds terrible, dry and gravelly, like she’s smoked her whole life. 

“Everyone’s been worried about you _ , _ ”

_ Hard to believe,  _ She thinks suddenly. She clenches her fist and closes her eyes. On her own, she can stop these thoughts, but it gets so hard with people around. When there’s something to ruin.

He waits for her to finish coughing before continuing. 

“Leaving you alone was wrong of me. I should have been an adult and try understand why you lashed out the way you did,”

“...Kabu, why are  _ you _ apologizing? What I said to you…” She doesn’t actually remember what she said, which makes the whole thing worse. She just remembers wanting to tear off her skin, wanting to make Kabu as deeply unhappy as she was at that moment. She does clearly remember accusing him of picking favorites between her and Xiao.

“Does not matter. What you said told me everything I needed to know, you told me how to help you and I didn’t. Hurt or not, I’m an adult and, I know you do not like hearing this, but you’re a child,”

She doesn’t say anything. He has to ask if she’s still there, sounding even more worried for her. She smiles sadly as tears well up and slip down her face.

“...You sound like Raihan when you say that,”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Y-Yeah,” She starts sobbing, voice cracking. She does her best to muffle the sound, pressing her hand to her mouth again. 

Kabu tells her he’s coming over, he doesn’t ask and even if he did she wouldn’t tell him no. 

She stops crying by the time Raihan calls her. She freezes, stuck staring at her phone screen. She has to close her eyes to press “accept”.

Neither of them say anything, just listen to each other breath like a couple of freaks. In August, she would have said that to him, but now it seems wrong for those to be their first words to each other in such a long time. 

“I don’t have to tell you who told  _ me _ , do I?” Maybe she  _ should _ tell Kabu not to come over since he wants to pull this kind of shit with her.

“I have an idea...This is about what I said to her isn’t it?” 

_ Why are you asking, you know it is. It’s always about Xiao, isn’t it? _

“Ze,” Fuck, her name sounds so nice coming from him. It sounds special, makes her feel special. “I thought you were okay with waiting?”

She bites her lip and tries to control herself, taking as deep of breaths as her lungs will allow.

“I was, but, what was I supposed to say? “I know you’re unwilling to date a minor, but please don’t leave me?” Why would I do that to you, Rai—”

She sits back down as she breaks down coughing, dead flowers pushing up her throat painlessly. In the midst of her coughs she hears him. Dry and rough coughs, he sounds like he’s coughing up a lung. This time she’s the one waiting for someone else to stop.

“We just...It feels like if we wait for me to be better, we’ll be waiting forever,

“And we don’t have forever anymore, Raihan,”

Again, it’s quiet between them. Her breathing is shallow, but he doesn’t sound too well himself. How long did she spend idolizing him, obsessing over him, it’s weird saying it now, but she loved him before they even met. 

She’s quiet when she speaks again. She doesn’t have to ask, but she needs him to tell her. “How long have you had it?”

She catches him off guard and she can hear his cough better this time. He doesn’t sound nearly as bad as her. Is loving her easier than she thought? She smiles at the thought that they were both too scared to hurt each other.

It’s almost funny. This really was a joke, huh?

* * *

Ze can’t convince Kabu to not come to her home. 

Once he’s fired up, it’s impossible to get him to calm down. She’s sure that if she told him his little plan worked he wouldn’t come over, but she also doesn’t want to run the risk of him doubling down and trying to chaperone her and Raihan. She loves Kabu and he might as well be her father, but sometimes it’s overkill. On the other hand, he texts her to ask if her kitchen is in a state to cook in. Even if she can’t keep it down, Kabu’s cooking sounds great after such a long time living off...nothing, really. 

She still doesn’t feel good and it’s frustrating. Ze knows months of killing herself and two years of yearning wouldn’t be erased by a love confession, but she expected to feel a little better. However, when she realizes that she should get in the shower she still struggles to find motivation to do so. 

Once the shower is out of the way, most of her old routine falls into place. Even when she’s clean with her teeth brushed, hair combed and face moisturized, Ze doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror. 

The bags under her eyes are dark and heavy. She’s never looked so much like a Zigzagoon without makeup before. It’s not extreme, but her face is thinner, just like her body. Her skin is dull, but her eyes are bright and she focuses on that. She tries and that...that’s what matters, she tells herself. 

She rushes to get dressed, it’s not until she’s frantically tightening her smallest belt that she realizes her chest doesn’t burn. She can breathe properly again. Eventually she’s going to cough up the roots of Raihan’s flowers, but the spider lilies remain. 

Shouldn’t they?

She presses her chest, breathes as deep as her lungs will allow, Ze even pushes her luck and closes her eyes and thinks of Xiao. Thinks of the day she asked Ze to be her Maid of Honor, but there’s nothing. Sure, she still feels the bitter sting of jealousy towards her, it’s hard not to though. First, she stole Kabu from her and then Leon stole Xiao from her. It’s as if pain follows where they collide, but only for Ze. 

She clenches her fist and takes a deep breath. She might have some unresolved feelings regarding Xiao, but what matters is Ze didn’t feel the sharp knife of her unrequited love. Right now, that’s enough for her. 

Kabu he picks up on Ze's anticipation when she greets him. His eyes burn bright when she mentions that someone else is supposed to be coming over in a few hours. She doesn’t have to say his name, the way her cheeks flush and she tries to hide her smile from him tells Kabu enough. It doesn’t last long though, when she realizes she shouldn’t be so happy after everything she did.

He doesn’t ask about them or about the flowers. Ze wishes he would, but she figures that’s a conversation she should have with Raihan first.

Kabu doesn’t do much other than help her tidy up her home. He gives her a pointed look when they move up to her room and she strips her sheets. She doesn’t dignify his little joke with a response and just asks him to bring her a new set from her linen closet. Once her bed is made, she and Kabu stand at her desk, staring down at the mass of flowers there. 

“ _ If you would like, I can— _ ”

She shrugs. “I can’t keep ignoring them, Kabu,”

He’s hesitant to leave her up in her room by herself, but she insists and he relents. It’s not long before Ninetales is trotting in and making himself at home on her bed, though. Ze can feel herself getting angry, her shoulders tensing and her temper rising. It makes sense that Kabu wouldn’t trust her on her own after everything, but it’s still annoying being watched in her own space. It’s not long before Ninetales barks at her, sharp and commanding and she walks over to him. 

“What?”

The fox sits up on his haunches, and they stare each other down. This is a dangerous game to play with a Ninetales, she knows it, but the gleam in his eyes seems harmless. It’s almost playful, as if she’s a little girl again and they are playing in Kabu’s back garden while the adults have tea. 

Ninetales leans forward and Ze closes her eyes as he licks her face. It’s short, not like Arcanine who always insists on pinning Ze down before licking her face. Her anger is gone by the time he’s finished giving her kisses and she sets to work. 

She doesn’t feel much of anything as she tosses out the flowers. They don’t feel like her anymore and she figures that’s the point of confessing. Their love is no longer pensive, they’re going to move forward too. 

It’s a bit worrying, however. People on Hanahaki forums talk about the days they finally get to throw out their flowers as happy, the object of their desire alongside them. She thinks that she’s doing it wrong, it’s what she’s best at. She hums and decides to save it for the conversation with Raihan. Maybe they can clean up his flowers together?

She does end up saving the best looking golden chain in case Raihan wants to see it. Ze would be lying if she said she didn’t want to know what flower she was for Raihan. 

The high of having Kabu and Raihan in her life again fades sooner rather than later. She hasn’t been putting much physical effort into her daily life, so up and cleaning her house takes a lot out of her. 

Kabu makes her be kind to herself when she comes downstairs, complaining about being out of breath. He reminds her that she just got over a terminal disease. She decides against mentioning her malnutrition to him. 

He lets her fall asleep on the couch this time. Centiskorch skitters over and curls up on the ground beside her head, happy to be with her again. Even with her lungs shot from so much activity, it’s the calmest she’s been in a while.

* * *

Kabu wakes her gently.

It’s dark out by the time he wakes her, but with it being the dead of winter, it could just be 6PM. She walks him to the elevator.

“ _ Ittekimasu _ ,” It’s embarrassing having him say goodbye like that, but her chest warms at the intimacy. She almost wants to hide her embarrassment with a joke, ask him when her suite became his home, but she can’t.

“ _ Itterashai _ ,” The elevator opens, but Kabu doesn’t move to enter, just gives her a look. She closes her eyes and slaps her hands over her face, but bends down just enough for him to kiss her forehead. 

Despite her flushed face and warm chest, she’s happy he did all of this for her. Happy that he was willing to forgive her so easily. 

She texts Raihan as she walks back into her house, then calls the Daycare. She tells them she’ll be picking up her team tomorrow, requesting that they’re ready for her.

She falls asleep again, waiting for Raihan. Logically, she knows she’s catching up on lost sleep, but it seems like all she does is sleep. She wakes up to Raihan knocking on her door. She lies there, paralyzed by some inexplicable fear.

She hasn’t done anything to him, but she’d rather be facing Leon again. Her happiness shouldn’t be dependent on him and yet it is. All of this was for him, wasn’t it? Her phone buzzes next to her. It’s Raihan asking if she’s okay, that he can wait if she’s not ready. 

She gets off the couch. She can’t wait any longer. 

When she opens the door, it’s quiet. They’re both smiling, but neither of them speak, they don’t move. Ze knows Raihan is just as scared as she is, but being faced with his fear makes her feel better. Knowing she means just as much to him as he does to her makes taking that first step easier. 

She figures Raihan feels the same with how he steps forward and pulls her into his arms. She closes her eyes and hugs him back and basks in him. It’s overwhelming, having who she’s wanted for so long wanting her right back, but it feels right. 

Being in his arms feels like coming home. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you got this far, please consider leaving a kudos or a comment!  
> feel free to come chill with me at my raihan shrine twitter: https://twitter.com/jockshrine


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